Economic Insight: you can’t just keep fiddling with the taps

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Something worrying appears to be happening at the world’s central banks. In
the past week, both the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve
chairwoman-elect Janet Yellen signalled that easy money will be in place
until long after exit thresholds have been triggered. Stimulus is not a
problem, they said, as long as inflation remains under control.

At any other time the argument would hold water. But the world is five years
into a massive monetary experiment. No one honestly knows what’s coming down
the road, which is why policy decisions today deserve better than the simple
justifications of

It is understandable that the construction of an air-polluting,
noise-blighting £22 billion third runway to turn Heathrow into the world’s
pre-eminent superhub caught the eye, but the Davies report into airport
expansion also made another radical suggestion: that — third runway or not —
Heathrow should start acting like the UK hub that it pretends to be